Media Create – Software

This week, the whole market was hit by the usual post-Christmas drop, which was made even worse this year by Christmas being on Sunday. Since the Christmas boost was over when the week started, and the New Year boost will only impact Week 1, 2017, sales dropped even more sharply than usual.

It’s quite apparent when you look at the drop in sales: family-friendly titles on Wii U and Nintendo 3DS saw the biggest drops. Pokémon Sun and Moon dropped below 100 000 units, with 90 891 units this week (-67%). According to Media Create, total sales will top 3 million units at retail in the upcoming weeks (for the stand-alone version).

Sales for Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS also dropped sharply, but they remained quite strong with 73 002 units this week. Since launch, the game has already sold over 790 000 units, and should easily reach 1 million units down the line.

As for Momotaro Dentetsu 2017: Tachiagare Nippon!!, it had a great second week with 63 577 units sold. With the usual second-week and post-Christmas drops, -52% is a pretty good performance. We can expect sales to remain strong next week (with the New Year boost), but also throughout 2017.

Speaking of Momotaro Dentetsu, Momotaro Dentetsu 2010: Sengoku Ishin no Hero Daishuugou! no Maki made its comeback in the Top 30 from Famitsu, this week. It sold 6 476 units, which is quite remarkable for a Wii game released in 2010 (this is the Nintendo Selects version, released in 2011). This just goes to show how popular the Momotaro Dentetsu franchise is in Japan, and why Nintendo was interested in it in the first place.

Next, let’s take a look at how the various holidays titles fared during this post-Christmas week:

04./03. [3DS] Yo-Kai Watch 3: Sukiyaki (Level 5) – 49.350 / 561.508 (-72%). In a couple of week, we should be able to see how fast this one will reach 1 million units (if it ever does so…);

08./06. [3DS] Miitopia (Nintendo) – 18.259 / 120.971 (-62%). As mentioned previously, post-holiday sales will tell us how far this one will go. So far, sales are decent, but nothing really impressive;

09./13. [3DS] Animal Crossing: New Leaf – Welcome amiibo (Nintendo) – 10.858 / 85.842 (-51%). It should be able to reach 100 000 units sold within the first two weeks of 2017;

Media Create – Hardware

Hardware-wise, the Wii U slided back to insignificance, with 2 589 units sold this week. That’s almost 25 times less than during the same week last year. Unfortunately, this is pretty much the end of the line for the Wii U, which has been dying a very slow (and somewhat painful) death…

As for the Nintendo 3DS, the drop is radical this week: it went from 176 562 units to 70 522 units at once. This is a combination of post-Christmas drop and what we explained earlier (about Week 52 not benefitting from the New Year boost). Compared to last year, the drop is also noticeable: about 50 000 units, and this time, the Nintendo 2DS wasn’t enough to compensate.

The Nintendo 3DS did manage to sell 2 million units this year, but it’s only when taking into account the Pokémon Nintendo 2DS bundles from February (which are not tracked by Media Create). The drop for the full year is about 372 000 units (272 000 units with the 2DS bundles), which is a pretty solid result for a 6 year old platform.

The upcoming weeks will be pretty interesting for the Nintendo 3DS: Week 1 will have the usual New Year boost, but after that comes some pretty rough weeks for the market as a whole. What’s more the Nintendo 3DS has only one release this month: Poochy & Yoshi’s Woolly World. As Nintendo’s handheld is about to enter its 7th year on the market, sales are bound to drop sharply (especially with the upcoming Nintendo Switch).

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